Sunday, January 15, 2006

Buttons and Bumperstickers

An underappreciated art form--in some ways closer to poetry than to prose. The goods ones make an argument or tell a joke or story in an impossibly small number of words.

Consider one of my favorites: "What If They Had a War and Nobody Came?" Nine words to sketch a profound and debatable point--that there is no "they," that state action always comes down to choices by individuals. Auden did it in eight--"There is no such thing as the state"--but not as well. The same point is, I hope, one of the ideas implicit in the novel I have forthcoming from Baen this spring--but it took me a lot more words.

Or, another favorite of mine, "Don't Commit Suicide: It is Illegal to Destroy Government Property." My wife offers, as a different example of the same art form, the title of an essay by Thomas Sowell: "Pink and Brown People." And, for maximum offensiveness in minimum words: "Nuke the Whales."

Herewith two of mine, both for specialized audiences. One, intended as a button to be sold at events of the Federalist Society: "Lochner v. New York was Rightly Decided." The other, a bumper sticker for those of us who spend too much time in multiplayer online games: "My Alt is a BMW."

I enjoy the ongoing debate expressed via the Darwin "fish" and the Jesus fish. What I enjoy most is the irony of the Christian counterattack: the Jesus fish (often with "Truth" written on it) devouring the Darwin "fish." There's nothing quite as odd as fighting against the theory of evolution by using one of its base tenets: survival of the fittest.

Both are punchy, but I find both ambiguous. The first could either be an anarchist slogan or a deliberate spoof of an anti-Vietnam War (or anti-Gulf War or ...) slogan, designed to make fun of the anti-war position. The second could be anti-abortion, or anti-death penalty, or any of a variety of other things.

Along the lines of spoof slogans, I'm fond of "Reunite Gondwanaland."

"Real Rebels Don't Support Centralized State Authority" is too explicit and preachy for my taste. "Real Rebels Don't Fight for Power" might make the point better.

While not a bumber sticker or button, there was a guy standing outside one of those TV studios with windows that allow you to see people outside on election night 2004 that was wearing a shirt that read, "Fuck this shit."

In the 1973 movie Sleeper, Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) is accidentally being frozen down for 200 years. He wakes up in 2173, only to find out that the US has become a fascist style police state. He falls in love with a girl, and joins her in a revolutionary underground movement.

In one scene, they run into a 200 year old, run-down, car with the funniest bumper sticker:

"REGISTER COMMIES, NOT GUNS."

The girlfriend doesn’t understand the message, and hence Miles Monroe explains:

“Oh, he was probably a member of the National Rifle Association. There was a group that helped criminals get guns so they could shoot citizens.”

And a related joke my all time favorite, (though I guess jokes are off topic): "Werner Heisenberg was pulled over for speeding. Cop asks him 'Do you know how fast you were going?', 'No', Heisenberg replied, 'but I know exactly where I was'.

"Remember, the government big enough to give you everything want is big enough to take away everything you have."

"No taxation... period."

"I wish I could go back in time and murder FDR."

I was a more rambunctious libertarian when I bought them.

I'm curious, David, as to your fondness for the Lochner decision. It's distinctly anti-federalist, and--if you think that federalism is a good thing--there's a bit of tension there. How do you justify thinking it was right?

"I'm curious, David, as to your fondness for the Lochner decision. It's distinctly anti-federalist, and--if you think that federalism is a good thing--there's a bit of tension there. How do you justify thinking it was right?

Originalist grounds? Or just a provocative thing to say?"

Mainly to be provocative.

I think Lochner's originalist grounds are pretty shaky. Some years ago, I published in _Liberty_ a review of a biography of Stephen Field. I entitled it "Earl Warren in a White Hat." So far as I can tell, Field did what Warren was accused of doing--first decided what the Constitution ought to say, and then went looking for some way of claiming it said it.

The difference, of course, is that Field was, on the whole, on the right side. The Constitution ought to protect freedom of exchange and freedom of contract.

I had a custom bumper sticker made that has a big red "X" through, "Article I, Section 8, Clause 3", which is of course the commerce clause. It's mainly good as a conversation starter, since few people would know off hand what it meant.